


fuck a jubilee, who wants it

by newsbypostcard



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky's birthday, Depression, Gen, blanket winter soldier trauma warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 18:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10599693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: Twenty-seven, spent freezing in France. Twenty-six was spent freezing in Italy. Now he's thirty-four or twenty-eight or a fucking centenarian and he's freezing in America.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [К черту юбилеи](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14127999) by [remontada](https://archiveofourown.org/users/remontada/pseuds/remontada)



> Tabbing between several wips and not posting a heck of a lot right now so here's an expanded version of a wee thing [I sort of wrote](http://newsbypostcard.tumblr.com/post/158255631396/i-was-pushing-to-have-a-fic-finished-for-buckys) a month ago for Bucky's birthday.
> 
> This features flashbacks to when Bucky was the Winter Soldier. I didn't warn for violence because there is no physical violence, but coersion and gloating around same does occur; there is certainly psychic violence at hand.

  


  


He’s not 100. 

People joke about it. Bucky Barnes, born 1917. That makes him a hundred years old, just because it's a hundred years later. Sure. It's a joke. He can roll with it. He's old, he's out of touch, ha ha, sure enough. He is out of touch but not the way that they mean. He's got infodumps in his head, spread out between four and ten years depending on how often Hydra opted to deploy him. He's got the equivalent of wikipedia summaries in his head of every major and minor event over the last seventy years, clustered together in terrible bursts and that's itself a testament to the fact that he hasn't lived it. 

He hasn't _lived_. He's not a fucking hundred. He's a little over 30, if that. He'll never know exactly how much time he's lost, how many years he lived without knowing he was living.

It’s not right, celebrating. He's only 100 because of all the years taken from him.

He rolls with the jokes until he can't anymore. Big day coming up, boy oh boy. A hundred years old, huh? I remember when I turned a hundred -- oh, wait, no I don't. You're one of a kind, Barnes, you know that? The only one lucky -- _lucky --_ enough to have all this experience. What is that, the platinum jubilee? Don't hear that phrase a lot. You're the only one. You're the only one. You're the only --

_\-- one for the job. Name and rank, Soldier, can't you comply? Oh -- you don't remember? Did we finally beat that outta you? Goddamn, I really --_

\-- never thought you'd live to be a _hundred_ , right, Barnes? Where you're from you probably never even thought you'd reach eighty, I guess. I guess you --

_\-- can't get out of here now, way you always claimed. You're gonna die here, Soldier, but, hey; take heart. You won't die for nothing. You'll die for the very cause you started. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Life can be a beautiful thing, Soldier, cyclical. What goes around comes around, isn't that right? You'll make up for all those good agents you lost us, for all the --_

"--things you've survived... I mean, Bucky. Don't you think--" 

Bucky cants his eyes up to him and there must be something in it, because Steve stops and blinks at him. The sun's caught his eyelashes and if Steve's a star then Bucky's a black hole, and they're just caught in each other's orbit, doomed to talk past each other until one of them dissolves.

It's March 9th and not remotely the first time they've talked about this, but it is the first time Bucky's stopped treating it like a joke just because everyone else has. Maybe that explains the look of bewilderment on Steve's face. "No," Bucky says. "There's nothing here to celebrate. I don't want to talk about it. Don't bring this up again."

So Bucky should've dropped the act sooner. Well, the more you know. Try to please everyone and wind up pleasing no one. He leaves Steve with looking hurt and goes to pretend to watch the news. 

The next day dawns and the world doesn't end. Bucky's 100, he's not 100. How old is he now? 32? 35? He's been dead for many years; he was so young when he died. But he's still goddamn here, knows his name, so alright. May as well make coffee. May as well bake a cake. I mean, why the fuck not? He's free to do it. Maybe there is something here worth making a point of.

He makes a small cake, round, chocolate, because he can. He watches it bake, cresting, falling -- soothing. He takes it outside. It's a miserable day, and if that's not fucking fitting. He sits on the balcony and eats cake from the tin.

He isn’t celebrating this, but maybe he’s mourning. Maybe that’s what this day is for. It snows. That’s unusual this time of year but there the fuck it is: a reminder of the time he's spent since his last birthday. Twenty-seven, spent freezing in France. Twenty-six, spent freezing in Italy. Arguably, twenty-eight through ninety-seven were spent freezing in Russia, except for that time he killed that one guy. Or the three guys, whatever. Hard to say what year that was. Now he's thirty-four or twenty-eight or a fucking centenarian and he's freezing in America, fittingly enough.

Darkness falls and the door to the balcony finally cracks open, but it's not Steve there. It's Natasha. She has a bottle of vodka under her arm as she curls up beside him without saying a word.

She gets it. He’s grateful. He takes the bottle from her wordlessly and lets her sit with him awhile.

“Guess you’re still alive, huh?” 

Bucky laughs, dry. “Guess I am.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah.”

It’s 27 fucking degrees outside.

“You ever gonna celebrate it?” Natasha asks. She takes the bottle back from him.

Bucky scoffs. “No.”

“I mean it.”

So she _doesn't_ get it. He frowns at her, miserable. “Whoop dee freakin’ do. What have I done? Shit all, and then worse. I should've died when I was supposed to."

“Really? You’re gonna be like that?”

"Oh, fuck you, Romanov. Get off my balcony.”

“You fought for this," she says calmly. "You deserve to celebrate what you've won back. Choose a day and make it count, because you can’t let death overshadow you when you did what you did to be here and breathing.”

She’s right. He's furious. "Living to a hundred's not the achievement. It's a fluke. I didn't ask for that."

"So celebrate something else. I don't care what it is, Barnes, but pick something. Days like this are only survivable if you make room for other ones."

He squints at her angrily. "Where the hell is this coming from?"

"Experience." She hands him the bottle back. 

They sit another freezing while.

“So what day do you celebrate?” Bucky asks her. It’s mostly a mumble because they never talk like this. It’s too honest, too bracing. They’re better off deflecting.

Natasha shrugs. “The day I woke up."

Bucky thinks on that a while. “Huh,” he says.

She stays until the vodka's gone, then silently slips out. 

  


  


* * *

  


  


On April 4, he bakes a bigger cake. Tells Sam and Natasha to come over, shoves plates in their hands when they walk in the door.

“Eat this,” he tells them, then puts on a movie. Steve smiles at them, shrugs; joins him without a word.

Three candles stand on the cake. He doesn’t explain it, but then he doesn’t have to.

It so rarely snows in April. It hasn’t snowed for weeks.

  


  


  



End file.
